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brownish tinge, according to Jacoby, but I’m damned if I can see it. I doubt if anyone can except the experts.’

      Bond obediently picked up the ‘Top Crystal’ and for the next quarter of an hour M. led him through the whole range of diamonds down to a wonderful series of coloured stones, ruby red, blue, pink, yellow, green and violet. Finally, M. pushed over a packet of smaller stones, all flawed or marked or of poor colour. ‘Industrial diamonds. Not what they call “gem quality”. Used in machine tools and so forth. But don’t despise them. America bought £5,000,000 worth of them last year, and that’s only one of the markets. Bronsteen told me it was stones like these that were used for cutting the St Gothard tunnel. At the other end of the scale, dentists use them for drilling your teeth. They’re the hardest substance in the world. Last forever.’

      M. pulled out his pipe and started to fill it. ‘And now you know as much about diamonds as I do.’

      Bond sat back in his chair and gazed vaguely at the bits of tissue paper and glittering stones that lay scattered across the red leather surface of M.’s desk. He wondered what it was all about.

      There was the rasp of a match against a box and Bond watched M. tamp the burning tobacco down in the bowl of his pipe and then put the matchbox back in his pocket and tilt his chair in M.’s favourite attitude for reflection.

      Bond glanced down at his watch. It was 11.30. Bond thought with pleasure of the In-tray piled with Top Secret dockets he had gladly abandoned when the red telephone had summoned him an hour before. He felt fairly confident that now he wouldn’t have to deal with them. ‘I guess it’s a job,’ the Chief of Staff had said in answer to Bond’s inquiry. ‘The Chief says he won’t take any more calls before lunch and he’s made an appointment for you at the Yard for two o’clock. Step on it.’ And Bond had reached for his coat and had gone into the outer office where he was pleased to see his secretary registering in another bulky file with a ‘Most Immediate’ tab.

      ‘M.,’ said Bond as she looked up. ‘And Bill says it looks like a job. So don’t think you’re going to have the pleasure of shovelling that lot into my In-tray. You can post it off to the Daily Express for all I care.’ He grinned at her. ‘Isn’t that chap Sefton Delmer a boy friend of yours, Lil? Just the stuff for him, I expect.’

      She looked at him appraisingly. ‘Your tie’s crooked,’ she said coldly. ‘And anyway I hardly know him.’ She bent over her registry and Bond went out and along the corridor and thought how lucky he was to have a beautiful secretary.

      There was a creak from M.’s chair and Bond looked across the table at the man who held a great deal of his affection and all his loyalty and obedience.

      The grey eyes looked back at him thoughtfully. M took the pipe out of his mouth. ‘How long have you been back from that holiday in France?’

      ‘Two weeks, Sir.’

      ‘Have a good time?’

      ‘Not bad, Sir. Got a bit bored towards the end.’

      M. made no comment. ‘I’ve been looking at your record-sheet. Small-arms marks seem to be keeping well up in the top bracket. Unarmed combat’s satisfactory and your last medical shows you’re in pretty good shape.’ M. paused. ‘The point is,’ he went on unemotionally, ‘I’ve got rather a tough assignment for you. Wanted to make sure you’d be able to take care of yourself.’

      ‘Of course, Sir.’ Bond was slightly nettled.

      ‘Don’t make any mistake about this job, 007,’ said M. sharply. ‘When I say it may be tough, I’m not being melodramatic. There are plenty of tricky people you haven’t met yet, and there may be some of them mixed up in this business. And some of the most efficient. So don’t be tetchy when I think twice before getting you involved in it.’

      ‘Sorry, Sir.’

      ‘All right then,’ M. put his pipe down and leant forward with his arms crossed on the desk. ‘I’ll tell you the story and then you can decide whether you want to take it on.

      ‘A week ago,’ said M., ‘one of the high-ups in the Treasury came to see me. Brought with him the Permanent Secretary to the Board of Trade. It had to do with diamonds. Seems that most of what they call “gem” diamonds in the world are mined on British territory and that ninety per cent of all diamond sales are carried out in London. By the Diamond Corporation.’ M. shrugged his shoulders. ‘Don’t ask me why. The British got hold of the business at the beginning of the century and we’ve managed to hang on to it. Now it’s a huge trade. Fifty million pounds a year. The biggest dollar-earner we’ve got. So when something goes wrong with it, the Government gets worried. And that’s what’s happened.’

       M. looked mildly across at Bond. ‘At least two million pounds’ worth of diamonds are being smuggled out of Africa every year.’

      ‘That’s a lot of money,’ said Bond. ‘Where are they going to?’

      ‘They say America,’ said M. ‘And I agree with them. It’s by far the biggest diamond market. And those gangs of theirs are the only people who could run an operation on this scale.’

      ‘Why don’t the mining companies stop it?’

      ‘They’ve done everything they can,’ said M. ‘You probably saw in the papers that De Beers took on our friend Sillitoe when he left M.I.5., and he’s out there now, working in with the South African security people. I gather he’s put in a pretty drastic report and come up with plenty of bright ideas for tightening things up, but the Treasury and the Board of Trade aren’t very impressed. They think the thing’s too big to be handled by a lot of separate mining companies, however efficient they are. And they’ve got one very good reason for wanting to take official action on their own.’

      ‘What’s that. Sir?’

      ‘There’s a big packet of smuggled stones in London at this very moment,’ said M., and his eyes glittered across the desk at Bond. ‘Waiting to go to America. And the Special Branch know who the carrier is to be. And they know who’s to go out with him to keep an eye on him. As soon as Ronnie Vallance came across the story − it was leaked to one of his narks in Soho, to one of his “Ghost Squad” as he chooses to call it − he went straight off to the Treasury. The Treasury talked to the Board of Trade and then both their Ministers formed up to the P.M. And the P.M. gave them authority to use the Service.’

      ‘Why not let the Special Branch or M.I.5 handle it, Sir?’ asked Bond, reflecting that M. seemed to be going through a bad phase of mixing in other people’s business.

      ‘Of course they could arrest the carriers as soon as they took delivery and tried to get out of the country,’ said M. impatiently. ‘But that won’t stop the traffic. These people aren’t the sort that talk. Anyway the carriers are only small fry. They probably just get the stuff from a man in a park and hand it over to another man in a park when they get to the other side. The only way to get to the bottom of the business is to follow the pipeline to America and see where it goes to there. And the F.B.I. won’t be much help to us, I’m afraid. It’s a very small part of their battle with the big-time gangs. And it’s not doing any harm to the United States. Rather the reverse if anything. It’s only England that’s the loser. And America is outside the jurisdiction of the police and M.I.5. Only the Service can handle the job.’

      ‘Yes, I see that,’ said Bond. ‘But have we got anything else to go on?’

      ‘Ever heard of “The House of Diamonds”?’

      ‘Yes, of course, Sir,’ said Bond. ‘The big American jewellers. On West 46th Street in New York and the Rue de Rivoli in Paris. I gather they rank almost as high as Cartier and Van Cleef and Boucheron nowadays. They’ve come up very quickly since the war.’

      ‘Yes,’ said M. ‘Those are the people. They’ve got a small place in London, too. Hatton Garden. Used to be very big buyers at the monthly showings of the Diamond Corporation. But for the last three years they’ve bought less and less. Although, as you

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